


This Mortal Coil

by clover (ingoldenink)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, just some musings by gertrude, spoilers for ep161
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23676457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingoldenink/pseuds/clover
Summary: Gertrude Robinson is afraid of few things, and death is not one of them. But the prospect must be given due consideration.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	This Mortal Coil

She had never thought very much about dying. Oh, certainly she had thought about _death_. It would be irresponsible not to. One must understand a Fear before one can confront and thwart it. Of course, once she’d looked into it, it became clear that there was nothing to thwart. It preferred the world as is. Nice to know that she and the End agreed on something.

As to her own death, however, she never really worried about it. Dying would interfere enormously with her plans, so she took care not to do it. This was what her assistants were for. Once upon a time she’d had some ethical qualms about tricking people into risking their lives for her purposes, but – well. Sometimes you’ve got to break a few eggs to prevent an apocalypse, and guilt would be of no use to anyone. (Of course, more recently she’d come to suspect that her assistants’ deaths had mostly been unnecessary, since the rituals were doomed from the beginning. But she’d made her decisions with the best information she had at the time, and ultimately that is as much as anyone can do.)

Gertrude was, unfortunately, all out of assistants at the moment. She had been slow to hire a new one, since she preferred not to pick at random – she wanted someone who would be good at it. She’d been spoiled, with Gerard; to be sure, he could be a tad careless, but she knew of no one who could match him for talent, familiarity with the supernatural, and good intentions. Or perhaps not quite _no one_ , but _he_ knew perfectly well what assistants were for, and unsurprisingly, wouldn’t have it.

Recently, she’d had her eye on Sasha James from Artifact Storage. Anyone could see the girl was intelligent; she’d make a fine assistant for however long she lasted. But there was no way to keep up the harmless-old-lady charade for this next task: harmless old ladies did not ask their assistants to set fire to their offices. If she wanted Sasha’s help, she would need to explain some things – which she was reluctant to do, since she couldn’t be sure how convincingly Sasha could play the fool in front of Elias’s all-seeing eyes. Furthermore, if she hired Sasha now, she would have little time to establish trust; she could not be assured of Sasha’s complete cooperation. It would put an uncomfortable number of weak points in the plan.

In any case, an assistant wouldn’t be of much use here. The plan would only fail if Elias caught on, and if he did, she didn’t fancy he’d have any trouble working out whose plan it was, regardless of who exactly was the one doing the dirty work. No, this was a one-woman job. It was simply not worth it to try to arrange for someone to take the bullet for her, this time.

And therefore it was necessary to think seriously about dying.

The prospect did not frighten her. It wouldn’t be a pleasant experience, to be sure, but she of all people should know that death was a mercy compared to plenty of other things that could happen to a person.

No, the trouble with dying was that it would be terribly inconvenient. Even if the next Archivist were Sasha, or someone equally bright, they wouldn’t know what – or who – they were up against. And given the importance of the Archivist, ignorance could be very dangerous indeed.

She certainly intended make a tape explaining it all. But if she was dead and Elias wasn’t, he would be on the lookout for this sort of thing, so there was every possibility her warning would not reach its intended recipient.

(Strictly speaking, Elias Bouchard _was_ dead. But she liked to stay in the habit of thinking of Jonah by his host’s name. It wouldn’t do for her to slip up and call him Jonah aloud.)

She supposed that she could tell Jurgen everything, and assign him to pass the message along. But she wasn’t entirely sure she trusted him not to do something foolish with the information, like hunting down Elias’s body and trying to kill it with a couple of old books. 

Really, it would all be much simpler if she managed _not_ to die.

Perhaps she wouldn’t need to die. Her connection to the Eye was as strong as any human’s – she supposed it might be enough to protect her. Though if she did call on the Eye in this manner, she would be very unlikely to remain human afterwards. Presumably she would become an avatar, like Mike Crew, or any number of others who had chosen their lives over their humanity. Of course, humans who became avatars invariably began to hurt people to feed on their fear, which was not a prospect Gertrude was thrilled with. But if it kept her alive – in particular, if it meant the difference in whether she could foil Elias’s plan – so be it.

The question, then, was not whether the cost was too high: it was whether this would work at all. If Gertrude became an avatar of the Eye, would she keep enough of her own willpower to follow through on what she needed to do? This was…difficult to be sure of. Most new avatars did remain something of their human selves, for a time, at least. So, maybe.

Perhaps it was worth the gamble. If it worked, it worked, and if not, there was one more monster in the world, which was not _good_ , but neither was it a catastrophe.

…only, it wouldn’t merely be a rogue monster. It would be a rogue _Archivist_. She didn’t understand, yet, exactly what form the Archivist ritual would take. But if the Archivist were an avatar, then Elias would no doubt endeavor to manipulate it into doing his will, and if what was left of Gertrude Robinson was dead, then he would succeed. 

So transforming herself might curse Elias with a more powerful opponent, or it might furnish him with a potent weapon. _Ay, there’s the rub._

Was it worth an attempt?

She trusted herself. She trusted her mind. If there was _anyone_ who could rebel against the brainwashing of avatarhood, then she could do it.

She thought, almost as if she were remembering it, of a woman and a man strolling through a park in the chill of November.

She made her decision.

\--

In the end, she was not given a choice. Her murderer made sure to be too thorough for the Eye to be able to save her. She took a tiny, useless, perverse bit of pride in it: it was the first time Gertrude Robinson had been recognized to be as much of a threat as she actually was.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] This Mortal Coil](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179252) by [Yvonne (connect_the_stars)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connect_the_stars/pseuds/Yvonne)




End file.
